Wednesday, November 05, 2014

medialens | Sometimes a piece of propaganda is so glaring you almost have to
splash cold water on your face to make sure your eyes are not deceiving
you. Take a bow John Simpson, the grandly titled 'World Affairs Editor'
of BBC News. You don't earn a moniker like that by offending the global
power elite. But is it really necessary to genuflect before US President
Barack Obama as Simpson did in a recent article masquerading as informed commentary?

Simpson began poetically:

'On a chilly November night in 2008 I stood with my camera crew in
Grant Park, in Chicago, and watched the new 44th president of the United
States being greeted by his ecstatic supporters.
'It was a magnificent, unforgettable moment.'

He added:

'I had heard several of his speeches and knew what a moving and thoughtful orator he could be.'

Simpson, in other words, like so many corporate journalists, gets
that lovely warm feeling in his tummy in the presence of Great Power
devoted to the cause of doing Great Good. As a Guardian leader simpered in 2008:

'Today is for celebration, for happiness and for reflected human
glory. Savour those words: President Barack Obama, America's hope and,
in no small way, ours too.'

Simpson, though, had 'a nagging question' in his mind about Barack
Obama. What could this be? That Obama was a fabricated PR puppet? That
he would turn out to be like all modern American presidents - a
heavily-marketed figurehead for elite US corporate, financial and
military interests? That he would maintain, perhaps even intensify, the
grip of US imperial power around the globe? Not exactly. Rather, it was
that Simpson:

'had a nasty feeling that he wanted me and everyone else he met to like him.'

The veteran BBC journalist 'found that worrying.' After all, Simpson
had 'spent much of my career reporting on strong political leaders who
didn't care whether you liked them or not.' His finely-attuned
journalistic antennae were twitching that Obama might not be up to the
job. Indeed now, six years later, 'it's hard to imagine that Barack
Obama can possibly be judged a success when he leaves office.' You could
almost hear Simpson sigh:

'In a way, it's deeply unfair.'

After all, claimed the BBC man, the 'economic judgement' of Obama is
'clearly positive'. Informed commentators may well beg to differ. Noam
Chomsky, for example:

'If you take a look at the [US] economy that is being created, it's
one in which real wages for male workers are back to the level of 1968.
Over the last decade, about 95% of the growth has gone to 1% of the
population. This is not a functioning economy. Just take a look around
the country. The infrastructure's collapsing. There's a huge amount of
work that has to be done. There are eager hands, tens of millions of
people trying to get work, there are plenty of resources, corporate
profits are going through the roof, the banks and financial institutions
are rich. They don't invest it, but they've got it. [...] If you look
at the unpeople (the majority of the population), their economic
positions, wages and income have pretty much stagnated or else declined
for a generation. Is that an economy that's working?'